Supreme Court Ignorance

Stupid comment of the day goes to three Supreme Court Justices who don't know the meaning of the words they use.

Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor objected to the court's haste in declining Muhammad's case Monday, saying it "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process has been fully concluded."

Haste? Really, haste? Haste would be carrying out the execution before the trial concluded. This is a case of a mass murderer who was convicted of killing 10 people in 2002. If you can not finish the appeals process in seven years (heck, two weeks) then you're incompetent and should find another line of work. Further highlighting the stupidity of the justice's complaint is Justice Stevens' comment that "he did not disagree with the court's ultimate decision that Muhammad's petition did not warrant the court's consideration." Huh? The prevailing mindset of justices like these is reason the appeals process takes so long.

Only thing dumber than the comments of Stevens, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, is the statement of the killer's lawyer:

"In its effort to race John Allen Muhammad to his death before his appeals could be pursued, the state of Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans Day," he said.

This liar (or lawyer or whatever) is trying to push all the buttons, isn't he? My client is crazy. Wait a second, I meant he's got a disease. How about "he's a veteran let's honor his service before we execute him." Hey, guess what? Being a veteran is not a get out of jail free card. Benedict Arnold was a veteran. So was Lee Harvey Oswald. Heck, Ted Kennedy joined the Army for a couple years after getting kicked out of Harvard for cheating. Here is an idea. You could have argued that nonsense at his trial. I'm almost surprised the lawyer didn't argue that his client shouldn't be executed for these ten murders because he hasn't gotten his day in court for the other ten murders he and his accomplice are suspected of but were never charged with committing.

One last point: If there are more openings on the court you can count on President Obama naming replacements like Stevens, Ginsberg, Sotomayor instead of ones who would read and uphold the Constitution faithfully.

California Should Just Do Away With The Death Penalty

To me the death penalty is not about vengeance. It is a tool that some societies use to maintain order and protect the public. However, for the death penalty to do any good as a deterrent it needs to be carried out in a reasonable time frame. Throughout the United States the deterrent effect has been minimized by an overly abused appeals process that stretches out over decades and makes a mockery of the legal system. In California which falls under the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the worst abuses have occurred. Here is a story of a murderer who has been on death row in California since 1982! His case is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for the THIRD TIME! Some statistics from the article:

California has by far the largest death row in the nation, with 685 inmates. Yet only 13 condemned prisoners have been executed since capital punishment was restored in 1977, far fewer than the 38 death row inmates who have died of natural causes.

By contrast, Texas has carried out 441 executions during the same period, and has 358 inmates on death row. Virginia has executed 103 people during that time and has only 18 inmates serving death sentences. Among them is John Allen Muhammad, who is scheduled to die Nov. 10 for one of the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area in the fall of 2002.

So, if as I said in the first paragraph, the death penalty is a tool for society then what we have in California is a state that keeps buying a tool it doesn't know how to use. What do I mean by saying they keep buying that tool (death penalty)? Well, each time the punishment is awarded the automatic appeals process costs millions of dollars.

Last year, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice called the state's death penalty system "broken" and "dysfunctional," and estimated it costs the state $137 million a year.

So as currently set up, the death penalty in California is just a busy work program to keep lawyers employed on the government dime (and it's a lot of dimes at that). 137 million dollars may not solve California's budget problems, but giving that money to defense lawyers to argue frivolous appeals isn't helping the bottom line either.